I have no reason to trust Tether, Strike, or whatever other company, but what do you mean exactly when you say this is an attack on Bitcoin? Genuinely interested
Discussion
There's a culture growing in the Bitcoin space of trusting third party celebrities/companies to buy your Bitcoin for you. Saylor first, now Mallers. Both represent Bitcoin IOU purchases through stock in a company. They're not offering any productive output - just buying Bitcoin with debt and selling shareholders stock. It undermines the value proposition of Bitcoin, and creates a 'paper' economy. If you watch Tether buying up US treasuries, they're further enabling a paper economy (US debt). Paper is Fiat that can eventually become fractional reserve banking backed by Bitcoin and eventually backed by nothing and we do 1971 again.. then most people have little to no understanding of Bitcoin or holding a seedphrase and have learnt to trust third parties and hand it over.
Thanks for articulating your thoughts, these are real concerns indeed. I see, perhaps naively, the whole debt-fueled Bitcoin treasury strategy essentially as an arbitrage opportunity being exploited by those who are in a position to do so, but I certainly cannot dismiss the risks that these centralizing actors present for the emergence of Bitcoin as the basis for a true sound money system that replaces the rotten fiat world we live in.
You’re right of course.
But as long as there is money to be made people will find ways to make it.
I’m a bit more ambivalent about the whole thing. The fact is we’re seeing a scare asset being monetised and pulled into the global financial ecosystem for the first time in anyone’s lifetime. We have no way of predicting how this plays out but I trust the bitcoin protocol and I believe in its value proposition. Right now I’m happy to buy more and watch.
Sure. I think theirs a huge difference between 'adoption' and how it's adopted though. And if it just ends up as centralised paper, then we're back to where we started.